"Among the unprincipled adventurers who gained favor in the corrupt times of the Stuarts, and whose evil counsels brought Charles the First to his doom, the most notorious was Buckingham. Gaining favor by lending himself as the subservient tool in accomplishing every evil purpose: restless, ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish, revengeful, thrusting himself into military employments for which he was unfit and from which he was compelled to retire in disgrace, getting a 'competent private fortune' by dishonest practices, which he lavished in overcoming the virtue of timid and venal men, his name is the shame of England. Nugent says of him: 'His shrewdness in judging of men was employed only to enable him to found his influence upon their weaknesses and vices; so that, when opposed to men of capacity, or thwarted by what remained of public virtue in the country, he found himself in conflict with weapons of which he knew not the use; and his counsels were dangerous, and his administration unprosperous. His only wisdom was the craft with which he managed weak or bad men, and his only virtue the courage with which he overawed timid ones.' Such counsellors, fatal to a monarch, are full of peril to a republic. Such men can only prosper in times of public corruption.
"General Butler has done, unless he has egregiously imposed upon us, two things well. He out-blackguarded a New York mob in 1864, and with a United States army at his back, he kept down a rebel city in 1862. Massachusetts is not likely soon to stand in need of either of these processes. But he never has accomplished anything else of much importance when his point could not be carried by sheer blustering. The history of all his other attempts may be comprised in three words— Swagger, quarrel, failure.
"Other men have aspired before now to the office of Governor of Massachusetts. It is an honorable ambition. They were content to leave their claims to be set forth by others, and were glad to waive them if by so doing they could promote the harmony of the party. This man seeks nothing but his own selfish ends, utterly regardless of the wishes, the welfare, or the harmony of the great party to which he professes to belong. The people of Massachusetts have sometimes elected to this high office men who in some particulars are not deserving of respect. But the people respected them, and chose them because they deemed them worthy, and the persons so chosen endeavored to deserve the public confidence. This man, if he is chosen at all, is to be chosen without having the respect of the men to whom he looks for support. It would be harder to find a leading supporter of General Butler who will say that he deems him honest, truthful, disinterested, or incapable of using power to gratify both his ambition and his revenge. The men whom General Butler will beat are the men whom he persuades to support him."
The morning after his defeat in the State Convention each of the principal morning papers in Boston headed its account of the Convention with the words, "Swagger, Quarrel, Failure."
General Butler made no further reply by letter. But he came to Worcester, where I dwelt, and addressed an enormous meeting in Mechanics Hall. I suppose many more people than those that got in were obliged to go away because the Hall would not hold them. The General devoted his speech largely to a powerful and bitter attack upon me. I replied at a meeting at the same place a few days after. My speech ended with the following sentences. After describing the heroism of the youth of Worcester in the battle with slavery and the battle with Rebellion, I added:
"And now, after the war, another enemy, unarmed, but bringing even greater danger, menaces the Republic. The battle with corruption is the duty of the hour. The blow which rebellion aimed at the Nation's life you could ward off. The wounds it inflicted are already in the process of cure. But this poison, this rotting from the core, is far more dangerous to the Republic. There is already danger that the operations of the Tweeds and Goulds in New York may be repeated on a more gigantic scale at the National capital. The mighty railroads to whom our public domain has been so lavishly granted, in some cases I doubt not, wisely, afford infinite opportunity for plunder and corruption. All these are at the cost of the labor of the country. The increased tax falls in the end on the consumer. With the waste of our public land are diminished the resources of the laborer. Following bad precedents Congress has itself been induced to set the pernicious example of which you have heard so much discussion. (This referred to the measure known as the Salary Grab.) The author of the measure tells you that he knew what he was doing, and if you didn't like it you could vote against him. Are you quite ready to declare to the country that in this great contest with extravagance and corruption, wherever the Republicans of the rest of the country may array themselves, the Republicans of Massachusetts fight under the banner of General Butler?
"You are doubtless familiar with Victor Hugo's description of the marine monster said to be found in the vicinity of the Channel islands, and known as the Devil Fish. It is apparently formed of an almost transparent jelly, colorless, almost indistinguishable from the water which surrounds it, armed with long slender limbs, numerous as the feet of the centipede, and strong in their grasp as hands of iron. The bather in those waters habitually provides himself with a long keen blade, which, when he finds himself encountered by one of these monsters, he elevates above his head in his extended right hand. As the creature approaches, the bather feels himself slowly enveloped in the powerful limbs which twine about him, holding him in their iron grasp. Suddenly a head appears, and drawing itself nearer the animal seeks to fasten its mouth upon the lips of the victim and deprive him of life. At this moment the bather strikes with his knife into the head of the monster. Instantly the limbs relax their hold, the hideous creature slowly disappears, and the bather is left unharmed and safe. Our Republic finds itself to- day assailed by a monster as dangerous, unpalpable, soft, horrible but strong—strong as hands of iron. The limbs of this monster of Corruption have seized upon our noble Republic, but at last there is a head coming in sight, and I think the Republicans of Massachusetts are able to bear the knife and strike the blow which will destroy its horrible life so that it shall fall powerless forever!"
That closed the discussion so far as we were concerned for that campaign.
In 1876 Judge Hoar, who had been, very much against his will, elected to Congress from the Middlesex District declined a renomination. General Butler, who had been defeated at the polls in the Essex District two years before was thereupon nominated, having pledged himself to the Republicans that he would abandon his fiat money doctrines in obedience to the declared will of the people; a pledge which as stated above he shamefully violated. There was no expectation of defeating him. But some few Republicans who were unwilling to support him desired a candidate on whom to unite, and they applied to Judge Hoar. He said he had no desire to go to Congress. But he thought there ought to be a Republican candidate against Butler and that he had no right to ask another man to take a position from which he flinched himself, and accordingly he was nominated. But Butler was elected by a large majority.
That however was substantially the end of his relation with the Republican Party. After the Inauguration of President Hayes he tried to have the public officers in his District who had refused to support him removed. On President Hayes's refusal he left the Republican Party and became, a year or two after, the Democratic nominee for Governor for two or three years and, as has been seen, was elected in 1883. I of course supported the Republican candidate and made, I suppose, thirty or forty speeches in each of those years. He had said in explaining and defending his fiat money scheme that the word "fiat" means "let there be." God said "fiat lux," "let there be light," and there was light. He argued that fiat money was excellent from the very fact that it cost nothing and had no intrinsic value. So if a bill were lost or destroyed a new one could be supplied without cost. He also said that it would stay in the country and would not be sunk in the morasses of Asia, especially in China and India, where silver and gold were absorbed and never heard of in civilized nations afterward. I quoted these sentences with the following comment: "That, Fellow-citizens, is precisely the difference between Omnipotence and Humbug, between the Almighty and General Butler. God said let there be light and there was light. General Butler says let there be money and there is—rags. This is the first time in our history that the American workingman has been gravely asked to take for his wages money it costs nothing to make, that it is no loss to lose, that it is no gain to get, and that even a Chinaman won't touch." Butler was very angry and answered, rather irrelevantly, as it seemed to me, by saying that I did not go to the War, to which I replied as follows: